word-by-word

Updated: May 14, 2025

That he loses almost nothing by translation is a compliment to the man, a disparagement to tho artist. Very few pages of his verse even aspire to perfection; hardly a stanza will bear the minute word-by-word dissection which only brings into clearer view the delicate touches of Keats or Tennyson; his pictures with a big brush were never meant for the microscope.

John Nichol - Byron

We have got something out of the lines, I think, and much more is yet to be found in them; but we have done enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word examination of your author which is rightly called "reading;" watching every accent and expression, and putting ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able assuredly to say, "Thus Milton thought," not "Thus I thought, in misreading Milton."

John Ruskin - Sesame and Lilies